


say what you saw, say what you heard (sick and tired of things getting tough)

by swanmills



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-08-15 23:07:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8076484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swanmills/pseuds/swanmills
Summary: “But doesn’t that get old?” Regina asks back. “Fighting for love."
something i thought of on a whim. think porn without plot, but for romance. romance without plot. canon compliant up to 5x23.





	

**Author's Note:**

> as previously mentioned, i wrote this for something specific, something that makes love on this show Real and Certain, plot be damned. if something looks abstract or like it was written on a whim, that's because it was. but don't think that means this is bad writing... i worked hard on this. duh.
> 
> anyway. disregard my rambling. enjoy! :)

Emma stands on Regina’s porch, distraught after a fight with Killian. She looks tired in more than one meaning.

 

“Come in,” Regina says. “I have a feeling you don’t want to be sober.”

 

Emma nods, relieved she doesn’t have to ask, and follows Regina into the mansion. Emma sits on the couch in the living room, a new one, much more comfortable now that Regina actually wants guests over. Regina comes back with two tumblers and a bottle of her homemade apple cider.

 

“Wow, you sure know how to make a girl feel special,” says Emma, knowing from multiple occasions how strong Regina’s liquor is. “How do you have time to make this, anyway?”

 

“I don’t.” Regina sits down on the other side of the couch, putting the soon to be filled tumblers on coasters. “This is from the curse.”

 

When Emma gets her glass, she downs it quickly, and then pours a new one. She nurses this one, feeling Regina’s gaze burning into her.

 

“Do you want to explain what happened this time?” Regina asks.

 

“This time.” Emma laughs, but not because she thinks it’s funny. “They all blur together, you know? Something harmless happens, we argue, and I run out of my own house.  _ This time _ … I think he was upset Henry wasn’t living with us in the house.”

 

Regina’s eyebrows raise and her eyes glint with frustration. “Henry can live where he chooses.”

 

“That’s what I told him,” Emma says. “The lamp was thrown and broken regardless.”

 

“He breaks things?”

 

“Most of the time, yeah.” Emma’s rubbing her finger around her tumbler, which is now empty. “I can fix it with magic, though, so I don’t mind too much.”

 

“You don’t mind that he destroys your property without a second thought?” Regina sets down her drink and crosses her arms. “Emma, that’s not healthy.”

 

“But it’s true love, right?” asks Emma. Her voice is small, desperate. Her hands are trembling, and tears are forming in her eyes. “We’ve fought so hard for it, you know? If we’re not true love, I don’t want him to feel like it wasn’t worth it.”

 

“But doesn’t that get old?” Regina asks back. “Fighting for love. You should fight  _ for  _ love, yes, but to  _ have  _ it? You shouldn’t fight to  _ have  _ love. It should already be there.”

 

(She thinks of her mother, cold, cold magic, and bruises.)

 

“But we aren’t fighting right now,” Emma contradicts. Regina speculates it’s not just to her. “This is the first time in such a long time that we’ve had time to finally  _ be  _ together. We’ve had so much trouble before, it’s not like a little more could hurt. That’s not fighting, that’s having arguments. Every couple has arguments. I mean, true love is always supposed to prevail. And I pushed him out of the fire. I passed the true love test, right? Like my parents, when they broke a curse.”

 

“Oh, Emma,” Regina says, and the distance between them on the couch is closed. Regina takes the glass out of Emma’s hands, setting it on the table, before cradling them in her own. “True love doesn’t have to be like your parents. True love is when magic makes someone your other half. That’s  _ it _ . It doesn’t have to feel hard. It  _ shouldn’t  _ feel hard, only right. Sometimes it’s just as simple as someone you can... joke and have drinks with.”

 

Emma looks into Regina’s brown eyes, her brown hands, her brown liquor sitting on the table.

 

“I didn’t mean it like that.” Regina quickly takes her hands off of Emma’s, and Emma can feel the coldness of the air seeping back into her skin, even with a fireplace roaring feet from them. “You  _ know  _ what I meant.”

 

Regina’s flushing, and Emma gives it to her. Later, she thinks, when remembering this moment, it’ll be easier to say it was from the alcohol.

 

“I know,” Emma says. She doesn’t know why she’s disappointed.

 

“Regardless, Emma, you are  _ made  _ of true love. It’s in your bones, in everything you are,” Regina whispers, because they’re so close, now, and Emma feels like she can hear both of their hearts beating. “I’m sure you could’ve pushed Leroy from that fire and still have passed that test.”

 

Her voice is so soft, a woolen blanket wrapping around her insecurities, Emma believes, so  _ sure  _ of her words. Her chest is swelling, something nicking her tonsils. She likes to think it’s the true love Regina speaks of, coursing through her veins.

 

Emma wonders if Regina can feel the gratitude coming off her in waves. Regina wonders the same thing, far away in her own mind, if Emma can feel how much she cares. She keeps her hands stiff on her thighs as a reminder to not verbalize her thoughts.

 

“You had Robin,” Emma says, “for true love.”

 

Regina doesn’t know what to respond with. She settles with, “Maybe. Soulmates and true love are two different things. Soul mates are people who, at the time, are supposed to be perfect for you. They’re compatible with you. True love is something planned since the day you’re born. They make you complete.”

 

“Do you think Robin could be your true love, then?” Emma feels herself waver, but Regina is far into her own mind to notice it.

 

“I don’t know,” is her answer, and Emma is both scared and relieved.

 

Their conversation is interrupted by a simultaneous buzz in Emma and Regina’s pockets, and they both pull out their phones.

 

“It’s Snow,” Emma says. “She’s says Henry--”

 

“--is sick and wants to spend the night here,” Regina finishes. “She’d drive, but David is doing night shift and Neal is sleeping.” 

 

Regina gets up, and Emma does the same, putting on the leather jacket she had draped across the couch less than half an hour ago, still glancing at her phone.

 

“I don’t know why she uses so many exclamation points,” she sighs. “I’ve told her to tone it down.”

 

“I’ve learned it’s best not to question your mother’s antics.” Regina opens the front door and lets Emma through, and when Emma heads to the direction of her yellow bug, Regina stops her.

 

“No. I’m driving. You’ve had two glasses; I’ve barely had half.”

 

“Well, we can’t drive in your car,” Emma says. “Your car only fits two.”

 

“I know,” Regina grimaces, “just give me your car keys.”

 

Regina drives the bug smoothly considering Emma’s only ever seen her drive new, more expensive cars, but, then again, she was driving stick shift when Emma was an infant. Henry is driven home, and put to bed, where he quickly konks out after a glass of warm milk and some medicine.

 

“I’ll be heading out,” says Emma, when both of them are downstairs, not giving the chance for Regina to suggest otherwise.

 

“Are you sure?” Regina asks. “I have a guest bedroom.”

 

“Where Zelena is currently resting. I’ll just…” Emma motions to the door. “Walk home.”

 

Regina sighs. She knows stubborn avoidance when she sees it, though when she sees it she’s usually staring at it in a mirror. “Text me when you’re… when you’re safe.”

 

Emma feels something in her gut at Regina’s omission of “home”.

 

“I will,” she promises.

 

Flash forward through the next two weeks. Emma ended up not keeping her promise, getting kidnapped by a vengeful Evil Queen and her lackey Hyde. The gang finds her easily, blindfolded and pissed off in the vault, but it takes longer to find out where the new villains to defeat have disappeared to.

 

Jekyll is nowhere to be found, much to their annoyance.

 

_ So much for ‘having time to  _ be  _ together’,  _ is Emma’s thoughts throughout this next idea of an adventure. But oddly enough, she doesn’t feel upset about it.

 

They find the Evil Queen and Hyde hiding in the covenant one week and locator spell later, using magic on Blue to make her defend them. Emma and Regina try using their magic to defeat them, but to no avail.

 

“She has a part of me, therefore has a part of my, our, magic,” Regina realizes a few days later. “We’re not whole, therefore… the power we usually have with our magic isn’t there. It’d only be powerful enough if she was on our side, which, doubtful.”

 

“I persuaded you. I could persuade her,” Emma jokes, and Regina looks at her, an emotion in her eyes Emma can’t name. She knows it’s not an angry one, though. “I was just kidding.”

 

“I don’t think we can take losing each other,” says Regina, and Snow agrees, making Emma remember they weren’t the only two in the room.

 

Three days later, they’re in the Charming apartment, Regina saying it would be easier to protect than her entire mansion. But with five adults (six, when Killian comes to visit), a teenager, and two infants, it’s crowded. Emma has faked enough bathroom trips to get privacy that Snow has recommended she visits a doctor.

 

Because even though they’ve defeated the Evil Queen and Hyde (it took finding a scared Jekyll living in a cardboard box and a rendition of the potion that separated the both of them to do so, but, it worked), they’ve made minions, and they haven’t disappeared with their caster’s demise. Probably because their caster only merged with the other half of her, Regina speculates. She also says they’re goblins, but they’re a burnt orange and less than two feet tall, with dragging arms and large, hairy feet, and that’s not what Emma had exactly imagined when Regina had said one day, “Oh, hey, there are goblins running around town now. We should probably take cover.”

 

(The above words are not verbatim, but, as Emma usually believes,  _ semantics _ .)

 

“This is a curse, right?” Emma asks, as the whole family-- dysfunctional as it is-- sits in the living room, an assortment of a couch, a loveseat, and a few kitchen chairs.

 

Emma is on the couch, Killian beside her on a kitchen chair.

 

“Yes, it is.” Regina’s in the loveseat, Neal on the ground below her, playing with the zipper to her boots. “I recognize it. I’ve used it before.”

 

“When would you have used a curse with goblins?” Snow wonders. “I don’t remember that.”

 

“It doesn’t matter,” Regina says, abruptly changing the topic. “This is still a  _ curse _ . My points is… it can be broken.”

 

“Well, I kissed Snow good morning,” David says. “so it’s not us breaking this curse.”

 

“Emma! We haven’t kissed, yet,” Killian says.

 

“I-I don’t know, Killian.” Emma’s looking at the wall, and she inches away from him. The pitch of her voice grows higher the longer she speaks. “I don’t think we’d work, either. We’ve… already done something?”

 

Killian is about to say something when Regina interrupts him.

 

“I gave Henry a good morning kiss, also,” Regina muses, except her voice is loud, and slightly harsh, a message for the pirate to back off. “Henry, has your other mother kissed you today?”

 

“No she hasn’t,” Emma answers for him. She says a playful, “C’mere, squirt,” to Henry sitting beside her on the couch. He leans forward and Emma smacks him a kiss on the forehead.

 

Nothing happens.

 

The next few minutes consist of awkward trying-to curse breaking. Snow and David both smother Neal’s chubby cheeks in kisses, and Emma gives him one on his fuzzy head. Regina even gives Neal a kiss, too, and while Neal gives a grunt and passes gas, the curse holding the town still isn’t broken. Regina gives Zelena a peck on the cheek.

 

Killian is about six inches from Henry when Regina looks him in the eyes and says, “Don’t even think about it.”

 

He glares at her with fire in his eyes, but does as she asks.

 

Emma sighs. “Well, we’ve tried everything.” The rest of the group nods, looking at each other in agreement. “And, now that we’re done, I think I need a bathroom break.”

 

The next day, mid afternoon, most of the family is napping. Snow and David upstairs, and Zelena in the bed from the open room, all three with their children’s cribs next to them. Killian is out, somewhere on his ship, Emma presumes. Her comment the day before had caused them to argue, for the umpteenth time, and Emma had finally broke, saying she wanted a break.

 

Emma, Regina, and Henry are the only ones awake. A television show is playing, quiet background noise while Henry reads, Regina does a crossword puzzle, and Emma plays Angry Birds on her phone.

 

A few minutes into this suspiciously serene atmosphere, Henry looks up from his book, glancing around the room.

 

“We haven’t tried everything,” he says, and his voice carries.

 

“What everything?” Emma asks, while Regina tells him to be quieter.

 

“Ma, when you said we tried all the true love kisses,” reiterates Henry. “We haven’t.”

 

“Well, who is it?” Emma sets her phone down and leans forward, elbows on her knees. “Are they in the apartment?”

 

“Yes. And they’re awake. And it’s not me,” he adds sassily.

 

Emma barely opens her mouth when Snow walks down the stairs, rubbing an eye. “Is something the matter? I heard shouting.”

 

“Sorry,” Henry says. “I was being loud.”

 

“Henry is saying that we haven’t tried every true love’s kiss,” Regina explains.

 

Henry repeats his list of hints. “They’re in this apartment, they’re awake, and it’s not me.” 

 

“Oh!” says Emma. “It’s Regina and Snow.”

 

“No,” Henry deadpans, “It’s not. It’s you, moms.”

 

“As in, me and Emma?” Regina looks at her son, shocked. “A-Are you sure?”

 

“Of course!” Snow exclaims, bounding to stand next to the trio. “You two have such powerful magic. And since the Evil Queen is back inside you-- no offense, Regina, I hope you know that I love you and know you’ve changed-- your magic is back to its original power. Think about it… have you ever known your magic to fail?”

 

Emma looks at Regina, scared because her mother’s right, and because she’ll have to act on it.

 

“Well,” Regina says, looking back at Emma, “looks like we’ll have to try it out.”

 

So after some moving and shuffling occur, Emma and Regina are sitting on the couch, inches from each other.

 

Both of them can’t help but think of the night a few weeks ago.

 

“It’s not that hard,” Emma says. “Just a kiss on the cheek.”

 

_ All she has to do is kiss Regina on the cheek. Easy, peasy. _

 

“Exactly,” Regina agrees, “A kiss on the cheek.”

 

_ All she has to do is kiss Emma on the cheek. It’s as simple as that. _

 

With both of them assuming they were the one kissing the other on the cheek, it’s only obvious that something goes wrong. Because they don’t realize their mistake until it’s too late, until they’ve both leaned in, until their lips touch.

 

True Love’s Kiss is an overstatement. It happens so quickly and they jump apart to opposite ends of the couch so swiftly that it should really be considered True Love’s Peck.

 

Emma is surprised for three reasons:

 

1.) She kissed Regina on the lips.

 

2.) A burst of magic reverberates through the room, in every color possible, and leaves through the window like a thief, presumably to disintegrate the goblins. 

 

3.)  _ She kissed Regina on the lips _ .

 

Regina is only surprised by the first and third one.

 

“Holy shit,” says Henry, and while both his mothers are too shocked to correct him on his language, his grandmother is not.

 

“Henry!” Snow chastises.

 

Henry looks at her and grins sheepishly, but then sobers up, putting a finger to his lips. He motions his head upstairs, and Snow nods, the two of them tiptoeing to the guest bedroom to give the two women some space.

 

“Is this why you said Killian was too good for be back in the Underworld?” Emma asks, quietly.

 

“I didn’t say that because I thought  _ I _ was,” says Regina.

 

Emma continues. “And we never fought for our love, did we? It’s that easy? I can just…  _ love  _ you?”

 

“It seems like you already do,” says Regina, at at this, they both laugh wetly, emotions sticking to the back of their throats like peanut butter. “Emma, it can  _ be  _ that easy. I’m right here. You don’t have to fight for it.”

 

“I don’t, do I?” Emma understands, and she recloses the space between her and her Regina (her true love, her True Love, something so important it holds a  _ title _ ), and kisses her soundly, the idea of pecks leaving the room entirely.

 

And with fingers threading through her hair, Emma feels like she’s finally won.


End file.
